Saturday, October 24, 2009

The ACT and SAT performance of Monroe County students should be higher. The School Board, district staff and high school principals all agree that this is one of our common goals. However, suggestions that the scores are particularly low are not an accurate reflection of either the student performance nor of teacher effort.

There is little doubt that the principals, teachers and district have focused on the FCAT (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test), as it is both the state and federal accountability standard. As such, the FCAT scores have been rising and are competitive with other districts. It is also accurate to suggest that staff may choose to invest time and energy into the key accountability variable at the expense of other tests as a responsible choice for both student graduation and community satisfaction.

However, Monroe County students can be successful on both FCAT, and on other measures, such as ACT and SAT. The district's recent increases in the number of students taking AP (advanced placement) courses, and their success in scoring a 3 or higher on AP exams is evidence of dual success. So too is the overall district improvement in SAT mathematics and writing, while boasting the highest percentage of SAT test-takers (65.5 percent) of all districts in the state. Hispanic students in particular had greater increases in SAT performance than their peer group nationwide.

Our analysis shows that students who take the PSAT as sophomores and juniors score 29 points higher than Florida's average in critical reading, and 26 points higher than the national average. For these same PSAT test-takers, they significantly outperform Florida students and the national average in both SAT mathematics and SAT writing. When Monroe students take the SAT without prior PSAT experience, their SAT scores plummet to levels far below the average scores of Florida students and the nationwide average. Clearly, two years of PSAT test experience yields dramatically enhanced SAT scores. Consequently, Monroe's three high schools will be insisting on PSAT experience for all sophomores and juniors, and for some freshman.

The ACT experience in recent years has been less positive, with declines in reading for Monroe and for the nation. Recently, a Monroe County School Board member presented analysis comparing the district's FCAT scores with subsequent ACT scores taken two years later. While I am not sure that the comparisons were truly of the same exact test-takers, without repeat scores and other variables, we do know this: Six hundred sixteen (616) students took the FCAT in 2007. Of those students, 258 took the ACT later. Of those 258 students, 52 percent (or 133 students) had scored at level 1 or level 2 on FCAT reading in 2007. These results are considered below the proficiency level. Additionally, 49 percent of the students who took ACT science had scored level 1 or level 2 in science FCAT.

This data indicates that the ACT test-takers were definitely skewed toward the lowest performing group when comparing 2007 FCAT performance of same students.

Another focus of the data previously provided to The Citizen compared FCAT performance and ACT performance district by district. This is not a standard comparison report that states or districts do, because comparing these tests and their results are particularly complicated and statistically tricky. For example, we do not know whether the districts that compared favorably had 52 percent of the ACT test-takers who scored at level 1 and/or 2 in reading. They probably did not, because those districts have very few students who score at those FCAT levels.

What we do know is that the demographics of those districts are different from Monroe. For example, while Monroe has 6 percent of students that are English language learners (ELL), Nassau County has only .7 percent, St. John's .6 percent and Okaloosa 2 percent. Monroe County has 26 percent Hispanic students, while Nassau is only 2 percent Hispanic, St. John's 4.5 percent, Okaloosa 5.5 percent, Santa Rosa 3 percent and Brevard 8 percent.

There is clear consensus among Monroe's top leadership that ACT and SAT performance must improve. Strategies and motivation will combine to get improved results. Negative comparisons with other districts, which could be statistically challenged, will not help the cause of getting our students to the higher levels of performance we all desire. Let us agree on a common agenda and move forward as a team to achieve it.

Joseph Burke is superintendent of Monroe County schools.